When The Philadelphia Orchestra emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2012, the ensemble became a canary fluttering back out of a deep dark mine. Philadelphia’s path forward will be closely watched, and not only because music lovers at home and around the world have such a stake in this beloved institution. In both its difficulties and its stategies for confronting and transcending them, The Philadelphia Orchestra strikes a resonant chord with other American orchestras, large and small.

This podcast was developed from our June 2012 behind-the-scenes discussion.

In a culture that exalts the individual, creativity is thought of first and foremost as the distinctive stamp of a personality, the outpouring of a specific genius or talent. But organizations can and must be creative, too, if they hope to endure and thrive. In the face of financial woes, aging audiences, dwindling arts education and the momentum of an increasingly digital universe, orchestras are challenged as never before to find creative ways of making music and making it matter to their communities.

This podcast was developed from our public forum in March 2012, Talking About Creativity and a “Conducting Business” podcast by New York radio station WQXR.

Where does the marvel of musical creativity come from and how does it work? What parts do muses and inspiration, intuition and the subconscious, hard work and happy accident play in the process? In this podcast, we examine the ways in which creativity can flourish, falter and forge new pathways in the symphony orchestra hall.

Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, talks about the different meanings of Creativity in the orchestral world. This video draws together highlights from our March 2012 event.

In addition to being Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas leads the New World Symphony in Florida — a group whose mission it is to prepare highly-gifted young musicians for leadership roles in orchestras and ensembles around the world. At our live event in March, he discussed how his work there also involves exploring new ways to interact with the audience.

Here is the first of our videos from Saturday’s event in San Francisco, our keynote conversation with Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony.

In this wide-ranging conversation with SFS Executive Director Brent Assink, MTT discusses the connectedness of all artistic endeavors, reflects on his ability to provide “context” for younger musicians, discusses his work with contemporary composers, quotes from Walt Whitman, and much more. Enjoy.

At the end of February, Michael Tilson Thomas gave a talk at the TED conference entitled “A brief history of classical music.” (You can read a complete write-up of the talk over on the TED blog.) Only MTT could sum up a thousand years of history in a compelling, informative, 20-minute session—covering musical notation, the role of technology, the birth of opera and ancient Greek gravestones.

There’s a reason we like to hear the notes we do today, he says. We’ve inherited “centuries worth of changes in musical theory, practice and fashion.” The secret weapon? Music’s silent partner: notation. “The impulse to notate, to code music, has been with us for a very long time.” Read the full article on the TED blog.

More recently, technology has changed the way people encounter and experience music. Recording made music readily available to all, whether you played an instrument or not. And technology pushed composers in new directions:

“Technology democratized music by making everything available; it spearheaded cultural revolution,” says Tilson Thomas. “Technology pushed composers to tremendous extremes; computers and synthesizers [prompted] intellectually impenetrable complexity.” And at the same time, technology pushed us to live in a culture of improvisation that is sliced, diced, distributed and sold. What is the long term effect of this? No one knows. But one real question remains: what happens when the music stops? What sticks? Read the full article on the TED blog.

What sticks, ultimately, is the power of music to transform and give meaning to our everyday lives. MTT’s final advice? “Dive in and pass it on.”